Aching For It

by Stanley Bennett Clay

  “Papi?” Étie asked, his head nestled in my chest, the intoxicating scent of his cocoa-butter hair easing me toward rapture.

  “Yes, my sweet?”

  “Make love to me?”

  “Anything you want, my sweet. Anything.”

  In my arms, he turned and kissed my chest ever so gently. He eased up to my lips and kissed me with a whisper. The warmth of his naked body on top of mine blessed and weakened me. My hands found his grinding hips, slow-dancing my loins into rapture, and I partnered his rhythm, even as my tongue slowly probed the delicious warmth of his mouth.

  His arms slipped under mine and around my bac. His fingers beneath my shoulder blades massaged me into near orgasm that was only trumped by the mounting bliss of both our dicks, hard and hungry, rubbing together in a knowing dance of their own. Their smacking stickiness, the comingling of our pre-cum, declaring in loud whispers the unquenchable thirst we had for each other, our love infallible.

  “You rescue me, Papi,” he confessed haltingly, the hot, sweet breath within his kiss igniting me.

  “No, baby,” I confessed in turn, a tear trickling down my cheek. “You are my savior.”

  He cuddled with me. My penis found the warmth between his legs.

  I gently stretched him, then slipped into him slowly, delicately. I kissed the nape of his neck. I slow-danced inside his tight and beautiful ass. He moaned with reciprocal pleasure.

  The steady motion of our lovemaking set aside for the moment the questions that still lingered above us. For this lovely moment, he didn’t seem to think about his father. I didn’t think about mine. We only thought about each other. We gave this moment to us. And when I came inside him, and he, at the same time, came in my hand, we lay still within the gentle softness of our undistracted love.

  We fell asleep that way, me still inside him, spooned together. We fell asleep as one.

  * * * * *

  It was some sweet dream out of a story that put a smile on my sleeping face. And when Étie kissed my smile, I thought I was still dreaming.

  Slowly I opened my eyes just as the touch of his soft lips touched mine again. He then gently pulled away. His beautiful midnight eyes, filled with a night full of examining contemplation, looked deeply into mine.

  “I think I will go see him,” he said softly, brushing his fingers over my cheek, through my dreads, informing my earlobe like a beckoning whisper.

  “Who?” I asked groggily, my eyelids weak and heavy with the sensation of his sensual touch.

  “Señor Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez,” he whispered, his moist tongue probing the inside of my ear.”

  “Who?” I managed to mutter, distracted and aroused.

  “The fucking son of a bitch who call himself my father.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The attendant at the information desk of Hospital General checked her computer. Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez was in the cancer ward, located on the third floor. Étie, unreadable, and I, trying my best to hide my anxiety, took the elevator up and inquired at the nurse’s station.

  The station nurse—her hospital badge identified her as Olga Herrera—didn’t have to check her records when Étie coolly mentioned his father’s name. She had sympathetic eyes that spoke more about Mr. Saldano Jimenez’s condition than I felt she wanted to reveal. Gravity was in the air, and medical decorum could not mask her empathy. Perhaps she was new, unused to the everyday reality of attending to the terminally ill, the injured, the dying. Or perhaps she had gotten to know Étie’s father, had come to find something in this dying man that represented an impending loss that would be mighty.

  “¿Usted es Étienne?” she asked softly.

  “Sí, señora. Me llamo Étienne Saldano. Soy su hijo,” Étie responded flatly.

  The simple statement caught me off guard, but not unduly unprepared. I am his son,Étie had said. It was the first time I had heard him utter those words, identifying himself as such. I found myself grinning widely, a grin that was quickly wiped away by Étie’s stern and sudden glance in my direction.

  “He speaks of you often,” Nurse Herrera continued in Spanish. “He will be very glad to see you.”

  “Y esto es mi amigo Jesse,” Étie said to her, introducing me, ignoring her gentle stab at good will. “Hola visita de América.”

  “Hola, Jesse,” she said to me, managing a polite smile before turning back to Étie. “Un momento, por favor.”

  She then pressed a key on the digital pad before her, waited a moment and then responded to the voice in her headset.

  “Sí, el Doctor Iglais. El hijo del Sr. Saldano Jimenez está de aquí ver a su padre.”

  She paused and listened again before responding.

  “Sí Trata. Lo diré,” she then said, disengaging the transmission. She looked up at Étie. “El médico querría hablar con usted primero. Será fuera en un minuto,” she said, informing him the doctor would like to speak to him first and would be out in just a minute.

  “Gracias, señora.”

  “De nada.”

  As promised, Doctor Iglais, a kind-appearing middle-aged gentleman with a bush of salt-and-pepper hair and wearing a crisp white hospital jacket, soon appeared and greeted Étie and me. Although he possessed a calm warmth, he wasted no time explaining to us, in English for my benefit, the gravity of Mr. Saldano Jimenez’s condition.

  “The combination of cigarette smoke and alcohol passing through his throat over many years have destroyed the protective lining of the esophagus and made it vulnerable to the cancer,” he explained. “Because the cancer has already spread to his brain, I’m afraid there is not much more we can do except make sure he is as comfortable as possible.

  “The high doses of painkillers have eased much of the discomfort, but they have also rendered him occasionally incoherent and nonresponsive. But as he has moved in and out of consciousness, there has been one constant, Étie. He has often uttered your name. Perhaps your very presence will bring soothing he has not yet known in these, his last days. Who can know for sure about these things that are ultimately left in the hands of God?”

  “How much longer he have?” Étie interrupted.

  “He is very weak, son.”

  “How long?”

  “A week at the most. Maybe a few days, if that. You are here just in time to say goodbye.”

  Étie retreated into a gothic silence. Doctor Iglais understood.

  “Come,” the doctor said as he ushered us down the corridor. “I will take you to him.”

  * * * * *

  Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez was not much older than me, but the cancer had reduced him to an ancient shell of a man. The hospital ward where he lay in his bed, one among many terminal patients, was a depressing reminder of life’s uncertainties. He was connected to the final days of his earthly being by needles, tubes and IV machines. He seemed dazed and near comatose, no doubt by the drugs that fed his feeble breathing, his skeletal body and his mortal soul. And he was ventilated by an open cavity in the crevice of his neck.

  Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez did not seem to have the awareness to respond to Étie, who had approached his bed and looked down at him coolly while the doctor and I stood back.

  But a will did slowly show itself, ever so slightly, in spite of the doctor’s grim prognostication. The near lifeless body of the dying man did not move, but his eyes, midnight as the midnight sky beneath the cataract-like haze of death impending, midnight like his son’s, flickered, causing the doctor to react with gentle surprise.

  The eyes moved bleakly toward the shadow that hovered above them, the shadow of Étie that eclipsed the bleak florescence of overhead hospital lighting. And somehow those eyes, clearly dubious in their duty, found something familiar in the silhouette.

  Doctor Iglais marveled at what was happening. The eyes of Étie’s father squinted and strained at the sight of his son looking down at him. I wasn’t sure what Étie’s father saw or thought he saw, a ghost or an angel, or what Étie saw—contem
pt or conciliation—but their eyes met and spoke with the awkwardness of strangers obliged by the ceremony of blood to nod as if speaking.

  “Hola,” Étie finally said, the intended anger in his voice tempered by a guarded plaintiveness.

  With barely the strength for the gesture, Mr. Saldano Jimenez slowly pointed at the electronic voice box resting on the hospital table next to his bed. Dr. Iglais moved to the table, picked up the device and positioned it gently in his patient’s trembling hand. Mr. Saldano Jimenez then slowly took the device and rested it on the hole in his neck.

  “Hola…Étie,” he managed to say in a digitized voice.

  There was a long moment of silence, save for the routine sounds of hospital business echoing in the distance.

  “You…look…good…” Mr. Saldano Jimenez struggled to say in Spanish, his hazed-over eyes examining the face of his son, squinting as if in soft sunlight.

  “I wish I could say the same for you,” Étie responded in their language without rancor or regret.

  Mr. Saldano Jimenez laughed weakly, a hoarse and labored digitized laugh.

  “You are looking better today than usual, Javier,” Doctor Iglais interrupted brightly.

  “That is not saying much,” Mr. Saldano Jimenez answered wearily, his eyes now looking off into the distance.

  Although my mind was better at translating their Spanish into English than I would have expected, the awkwardness in this small circle of four spoke a language that we clearly understood.

  “This is my friend Jesse,” Étie then said. “He is from America.”

  Mr. Saldano Jimenez slowly looked up at me, slowly examined me.

  “It is nice to meet you, Jesse,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you too, sir,” I answered nervously.

  “That is where I am going,” Étie interrupted before the strain could take full hold. “I am going to America.”

  Mr. Saldano Jimenez’s gaze turned back to him. His eyes—weak as they were, as cloudy and milky and dripping as they were—managed to widen ever so slightly.

  “America?”

  “Sí.”

  “America.”

  “Sí.”

  “When?”

  “Very soon. Next week.”

  “Then I am glad you have come to see me now, before we both have gone.”

  “I did not know you were sick,” Étie continued undistracted, unmoved. “Señor Trujillo informed me.”

  “I did not know you would come.”

  “I did not know I would come either.”

  “I could not blame you if you would not have, Étie. But I am happy that you did.”

  “Why?”

  “That I am happy that you came?”

  “Yes, considering that you have hated me all your life.”

  “Doctor, may I talk to my son alone?”

  “I am not your son!” Étie declared coldly.

  “¿Por favor, Trate?” Mr. Saldano Jimenez pleaded softly with the doctor into the voice box.

  “Did you not hear me?” Étie declared again, emotion betraying him, choking his words. I fought the urge to grab him, to hold him tightly in my arms, to let him cry there, cry like I knew he wanted to.

  “I heard you. I only ask that you now hear me,” Mr. Saldano Jimenez continued his soft plea.

  “Come, Jesse,” Doctor Iglais whispered to me.

  “Jesse, please stay,” Étie begged gently, grabbing my arm just as I was about to follow the doctor out. I turned to Étie with reassuring eyes.

  “Talk to him, Étie,” I said. “You’ve come this far. Hear what he has to say to you. Ask him why. Then listen to him, okay?”

  I could see the argument, the defiance in his eyes. He could see the love in mine. Slowly he surrendered. His eyes softened then glistened. He closed them and nodded resolutely as he let my arm go. I touched his hand. He held mine tightly then slowly released it. At that moment, I realized how impossibly much we loved each other.

  We smiled at each other, fighting tears. I turned and saw the doctor seeing us. He understood…again.

  * * * * *

  I haven’t had much experience in hospital waiting areas. Actually I haven’t had much experience in hospitals period. The only time my mom, healthy as an ox, was ever in the hospital was when she was delivering one of my siblings. My dad was always there to take her to the delivery room, and my Aunt Till, Mom’s sister and best friend, would always come over and stay with us while Mom gave birth. All of our check-ups, vaccinations and flu shots were usually done at Doctor Keever’s office over on San Vicente and Fairfax across the street from the Carl’s Jr., which mom would always take us to after our doctor’s visits.

  My fool brother Craig was in the hospital twice, once when he was nine and fell out of the avocado tree in our backyard, fractured a bone in his foot and ended up in a cast, and then when he was eleven and tried to do a wheelie on his dirt bike and damn near broke his neck. Well, maybe he didn’t damn near break his neck, but he busted his lip, had a lump the size of a walnut on his forehead and had to wear a neck brace for a couple of weeks. He would walk around the house at night like Frankenstein, traumatizing our little sisters into a week of nightmares, which really cracked him up and earned him a heavy scolding and grounding from my dad.

  But each time Craig went to the hospital, he was in and out; didn’t even get a chance to spend the night and get served food in bed and ice cream. So I never had a chance to visit him there. And even if he had stayed overnight, I was just a kid like him, too young for hospital visits.

  Dad had his heart attack at home. It took him away from us instantly. The paramedics pronounced him dead upon their arrival at the house, so he never made it to the hospital.

  The only time I actually spent in a hospital waiting room was when I drove my brother Andre and his wife Dee, pregnant with the twins, to Cedars after she laughed herself into labor during a Chris Rock special we were watching Thanksgiving night on HBO, and Andre was too panicked to drive himself. Somehow, to hear him tell it, he was able to pull it together enough in the delivery room to assist in the birth of his twin daughters, Debrina and Denise, even though the doctor confided in me that my baby brother almost fainted when Debrina’s head crested. Turns out those Lamaze classes and smelling salts truly came in handy.

  But other than that, a hospital waiting room was very foreign to me and given the circumstances of my being there, down the hall from where Étie’s father lay dying, down the hall from where peacemaking between a father and son was not a sure thing, a profound bittersweetness overcame me, a melancholy hopefulness.

  I wanted them to find peace and reconciliation so that their separate journeys would carry them across settled waters. I prayed desperately for this, for both of them.

  I didn’t know Étie’s father. All I knew of him were the painful recollections of a tormented child. And when I heard those stories, they often made me hate that unknown man. I hated him for the misery he had rained upon the child who would grow up to be the man I loved.

  And yes, I was indeed ashamed of the hate I felt and tried not feeling, which is why I could certainly understand Étie’s hate, although I wish it too were not so.

  I prayed for a miracle to happen in that cancer ward down the hall. I tried to boost it along not only with my silent but fervent words to my Heavenly Father, but through my own vibes, my efforts, my aggressive contribution to the situation. For God, whose image I firmly believe we are all created in, and who I believe is capable of all things, welcomes a little initiative. In fact He encourages it, so that we all have a part in our manifest destinies, in the answers to the prayers we offer up to Him. I don’t think He minds; in fact He probably appreciates a helping hand. I mean, what true father doesn’t relish a son’s rush to the rescue of a broken fence in summer, raking leaves in autumn, clearing snowy driveways in winter and tending puppy litters in spring?

  And so I gave it and Him my all. Mind. Spirit. Heart.

  I paced from one
end of that waiting room to the other and drank cup after cup of calming Dominican-blend coffee. I stared out the window, down toward the parking lot and the emergency entrance. I stared down at the street traffic as it went about its merry way in situations perhaps not as life-and-death as those in this building. And then I stared up at the sky. I realized it was time, in spite of my assistance in spirit, to let go and let God.

  And so, as I allowed the negative to drain out of me and the good clean energy washed over me, the face of my dad appeared. He smiled. I smiled back at him and I felt the touch of his hand brushing my dreads from my face so that he could get a good look at me, a good look into my eyes. And he liked what he saw. I could tell. I smiled a “Thank you, Pops.” And his “You’re welcome, son,” was so sweet and gentle that I didn’t even know he had gone. But he’d been with me, was with me. Both my fathers, both visiting from heaven, were with me.

  I knew somehow they were with Étie and his father as well and that peace would truly be made.

  * * * * *

  I had completely lost track of time. I had barely noticed the sky outside had turned into a peach-and-pink reflection of the setting sun, so deep into my séance state was I. I didn’t hear Étie’s voice gently calling out to me. Maybe it was part of the assuring calm in which I had then floated.

  “Papi?” he said again, as softly.

  Slowly I turned to him.

  “He is gone,” he said simply. “My father. He is gone.”

  “Étie,” I whispered, awestruck and sad. I put my arms around him and hugged him gently. “Baby, I am so sorry.”

  “It is okay,” he answered me, resting his head on my shoulder. “It is…okay.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  According to hospital records, Étie’s father officially died at 4:34 p.m. It was now nearly seven. I could only imagine what Étie had been going through in those almost three hours, from his father’s passing to now. But I think I understood why he took as long as he did to come out and tell me. That was Étie for you, always one to handle situations on his own, not one to burden others with what he considered his problems, his challenges. Being on his own for so long had made him that way.